Cream of veggie soups are ridiculously easy to make. It gets even easier if you have one of those stick hand held immersion blenders in your kitchen.

-Peel chop and sautee one onion and a few cloves of chopped garlic on medium heat. You can sautee it in olive oil, butter, margarine, whatever, it’s your soup, do as you will.

-Add about 4 cups of chopped veg of choice to the pot (broccoli works well, so does cauliflower, butternut squash, potato and leek, carrot, corn choose any one of them)

-I like to sautee the veg a bit, getting a little bit of caramelization going.

-Add a quarter tsp of black pepper if you like black pepper

-Add 4 cups (1 litre) of vegetable or chicken stock.

-Stir the whole thing up and let it simmer until your veg is cooked.
How long will it take? Depends on the veg, broccoli will be done in just 10-15 minutes, butternut squash will take longer. Test it with a fork to see how smushy things are getting.

-When your veg is soft, grab that immersion blender, plug it in and CAREFULLY start blending the veg that is cooking in the broth. You can keep your soup as chunky or make it as smooth as you would like. If you have no immersion blender you can mash everything up with a potato masher, or for a smoother texture, let the contents of the pot cool and put small batches in your blender to whisk things up.

-Return everything to the pot if you have removed things for blending

-At this point you can add dairy to make your soup as creamy as you would like. Sometimes I leave it as it and just serve it with a spoonful of yogurt or sour cream. If you are on a diet, low fat yogurt can add a nice thickness of flavour to the soup. Don’t care about the calories? A half a cup of cream will do nicely. Worried that you’ll do the wrong thing. Take a small scoop out of the pot, and try it with a little yogurt. Is it nice? No, try some with a little milk, or some cream, or some sour cream, or some creme fraiche. It’s your soup, make it how you like it.

-Taste your soup. Is it bland? Does it need more pepper? Is there a spice that you have a thought that might go well with this vegetable puree soup that you have made? I like to add some ginger to my carrot soup, sometimes corriander, sometimes I add some curry powder to my butternut squash or carrot soup. My mom likes to throw grated sharp cheddar cheese into everything (you can’t really disagree with a move like that).

Once you get the hang of it, you can churn out a pot of soup in half an hour while doing 5 other things. It’s really that easy.
Serve with toasted Ciabatta, or Alpine grain bread and tada! Lunch is served.